Another race, another opportunity for Ross Chastain to make new friends.
Sunday at Richmond Raceway, it was Kyle Busch who became a new casualty of the Trackhouse Racing driver who has angered several drivers this season with aggressive moves that sometimes leaves carnage in their wake.
Chastain started out the day have a pretty good race. He started second and took the lead on the first lap and went on to lead the first 80 laps, the most he’s ever led at Richmond and won Stage 1
But on a restart for the final stage on lap 241 Chastain entered Turn 3 underneath Busch; Chastain’s Chevy then slipped up the track into the rear quarter panel of Busch’s Toyota sending the latter spinning off Turn 4 and bringing out the caution.
Up until that point, Busch felt his race was going well.
“We were looking okay, and in a good spot just coming up through there working our way methodically through the field with our M&M’s Toyota Camry, and we got ‘Chastained’ this week,” he said. “We were his victim this week.”
Neither car suffered heavy damage, and both were able to continue. Erik Jone’s Chevy was an innocent victim however, and the crash ended his day.
Busch was satisfied to finish 9th, saying the contact didn’t hurt their chances too bad, instead it was strategy.
“We restarted back in a decent spot,” he said. “But then the next spin I think, was Christopher (Bell). That allowed the guys that were around us that we were kind of racing some of our team guys to come get tires and then they had 10 fresher laps on tires the whole rest of the day. So that kind of hurt us.
“If we would have been on that strategy we would have run out of tires, but we also probably would have been in the top five. So just wrong side of the strategy there. At the end, nothing, nothing to do really to flip that but good fight all day long. You know, the top 10 is about what we had anyway, I figured the best we were it was about a seventh you know, but barring a strategy call, we could have probably been top-five. So that’s all we had anyway.”
The contact with Chastain comes a week after he and Christopher Bell tangled at Michigan, a crash that Bell said cost him the shot at a win.
Chastain finished 18th Sunday.
Not our best day but certainly not our worst. Frustrating finish but so thankful for @MooseFraternity, @TeamTrackhouse & @TeamChevy! pic.twitter.com/OJG6hi9APd
— Ross Chastain (@RossChastain) August 15, 2022
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.